The History Project

Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle are famous for their marriages into European royalty, but before them West Virginian Katherine Elkins found herself at the center of a romance with an Italian duke that captured the world's attention.  

The facility's very name informs us that the hospital was both built in antebellum Virginia and in an era when views about mental health were much less sophisticated. But there's even more to the story than meets the eye in this landmark structure and its long history.

Lord Dunmore's war comes to a violent conclusion as Colonel Lewis & The Virginia Militia clashes with Chief Cornstalk and his Shawnee warriors in Pt. Pleasant, which would increase hostility between settlers and settlers, and severe American loyalty to England.

Colonial America was a cauldron of imperialism and territorial disputes, which set in motion Lord Dunmore's War, one of the continent's most significant skirmishes which would help to launch the American Revolution.  

It is said that "Well-behaved women seldom make history," and when Martha Stewart was sentenced to serve five months in FPC, Alderson, the world learned more about American history-makers both well-regarded or social pariahs.

With two jutting panhandles and western and southern extremes, West Virginia's unusual shape gives it four points like a compass rose, placing the Mountain State into the cross section of the Eastern United States.

West Virginia is the watershed of some of the nation's most storied rivers, some scenic and others industrial, they first used for exploration but later used for commercial development, as they are still used today. 

In December 1952, country music legend Hank Williams released his last song, "I'll Never Make it Out of this World Alive." A few weeks later, on New Year's Day, he was found dead in the backseat of his car in Oak Hill, West Virginia, with an unfinished song in his hand.

While the American Revolution battles in the coastal states were fought between America's Continental Army and England's Redcoats, the battles of the interior became extensions of skirmishes with Native Americans, spurred by the British that outlasted the Revolution itself. 

After his great success recruiting from the Shenandoah Valley, George Washington reached further into Western Virginia to draw its riflemen to serve in the American Revolution, whom he turned into a vast arm of the Continental Army. The 8th Virginia Regiment for alongside Washington in battle and suffered the winter with him in Valley Forge. 

Considered the "Father of West Virginia," Francis H. Pierpont was the man needed for the difficult task of gaining the state's independence from Virginia and entrusted by Lincoln to restore that state to order after the Civil War; the West Virginian who would be Governor of Virginia.

With its steep topography, residents in West Virginia are typically more concerned with floods than tornadoes, but in 1944, the Appalachian tornado outbreak unleashed fury upon the mountains. A category F-4 storm tested the resilience of Shinnston and surrounding area.

In 1974, the Kanawha County Board of Education introduced a new set of language arts textbooks, following state and federal guidelines to provide a more multicultural education. A newly elected board member, who ran against sex education, denounced the books and set in motion a culture war that resounded around the nation. 

The Mason-Dixon Line was created to officially decide the boundary between states, but as enslavement became entrenched in the South, it became the dividing line between slave states an free states, making Western Virginia's proximity to Pennsylvania a locus of the Underground Railroad. 

With the Ohio River as its northwestern boundary, the Underground Railroad ran through Western Virginia before the Civil War, giving the body of water the nickname, "The River Jordan," as it led to the "promised land" of freedom.  Abolitionists, the enslaved, and free Blacks conspired together to get escaped slaves across the river and to new lives. 

Amid West Virginia's natural beauty are various Oriskany sandstone outcroppings that do more than decorate the landscape.  The stone breaks into sand perfect for making glass, and within it is the natural gas needed to melt it. No other industry found such a serendipitous location as glass found in the Mountain State.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, every region had its own discount department store chain and for West Virginia and its neighboring states, Charleston-based Heck's reigned supreme, even outdistancing K-Mart and Wal Mart for a while. 

Throughout history, children have written letters to Santa with the list of toys they wanted, under the idea they were created in his workshop and they were…by extension of America's Santa, Louis Marx, who built his busiest factory in Glen Dale, where the classics of 20th century toys were made.

The suburbs between Huntington and Charleston fill a plain that offers some of the flattest land in the Mountain State. Called Teays Valley, even many of its residents are unaware this unique topography was created by an ancient river that mothered today's rivers.

West Virginians are used to frequently hearing his name, whether as the county or university, but John Marshall is more than a namesake in the state's history. He actually played a role in the first famous Supreme Court trail involving the state and was an early explorer of its rivers and mountains. 

Despite its name in West Virginia lore, the story of the Greenbrier Ghost is less about a ghost and more about a visage of a deceased woman who comes to her mother in a series of dreams,  to rectify what has been done to her in what became one of America's most shocking court tales.  

The view of Hawks Nest from the overlook called Lover's Leap is an awesome vision of nature's beauty but beneath it lies a dark history and the worst industrial tragedy our nation has known, made even more tragic because it was easily preventable.

Each year West Virginia harvests 2.7 million bushels of apples to be the 9th largest producer of the fruit in the nation. The varieties native to the state are among the most popular in the world and they and the growing industry are the special fruits of the man who many think is simply a legend, but was a real, live man whose influence set the course for the Mountain State's apple growing indust...

Since West Virginia developed first as part of Virginia, many of its county names come from the mother state's politics, but after its separation, the names diverge into the new state's history. Learn more about which kinds of politicians have the most counties named for them, which individual gave us two county names, and which is the only county named for a woman. 

While Appalachia is known for having a mostly European-descendent white population, it also has a rich history of people of color. This includes not just African Americans but also Native Americans, primarily Cherokee. There is one culture, though, found in Barbour County near Phillipi, that embodies all three races, known for the community they settled and live in today.